GAMMA

Posts tagged ‘public space’

first up :: i would like to thank all 1 person for contributing to the bummer mix! i am telepathically giving them an invisible ice cream come. anyone else who wants to help out please do leave a comment! you will be doing me a great favour and you will be loved for it!

on to business ::
fence drawing and other massacres

among other things, i’ve been revisiting this space again and again because i do and it is one of the few places in mtl that i can trick myself into being reminded of home [tho it isn’t really home]

there is a strange disappointment in relation to it, to a large proportion to my work. i feel that one of the main reasons for my making is that it is a coping mechanism for disappointments, loves, unloves, heartbreaks and art school. it is ridiculous, the amount of spoiled self loathing of privilege i carry.
i am not an artist.

one night after a futile attempt at a human relationship i took the sugar skulls i wanted us to have made and wanted to throw them, i wanted to throw them at THEM but they were not there – they were never really there but that is another story. instead i took them to the grave and watched them melt in future rain and fog.

extending REST was absolutely integral; this place is more than i think it is, i am always finding something new. it is always changing i am human and heather and never quite on top of things anyway.

i hadn’t really noticed this path before, and i blatantly did not even see the gate at the top of the hill.

i also worked quite a long way of the fence but i am really not satisfied at all with it and will remove it sometime in the very near future, hopefully tomorrow if life permits it.

hi hand.

one day i will get the hang of it, living, that is. knowing my practice, my abilities without constantly short changing myself.
i would say we all got some insightful criticisms and ideas today, though i should stick to speaking for myself.

i am thinking of writing + posting an homage to elisabeth belliveau because i recently splurged and bought ‘the great hopeful someday’ with my babysitting money [yes, i am 14 – what of it?] and it is my new bible. i’ve read it 3 times since tuesday and it is making me so much more aware of the smallest things in life.

like the finding of a quarter on the street and the action of putting it in an old icing tin that is now my nyc fund [$59.19 and counting!!!!]
like the house on waverly that reminds of michigan in 1979 tho i’ve never been there and i was only born in 86.
like my plan to touch every qat on the island of mtl
and the futility of existence that i am going to feel for the rest of my life because being 23 doesn’t solve anything.

i really thought, when i was younger than 22, that i was going to find ~true love at 22. why 22? well it was my champagne year – and it most certainly was, the most beautifully bittersweet bubbly i’ve ever experienced – without a doubt the best year of my life thus far, and i miss it very dearly. maybe 23 will be getting better soon but nothing falls into place. it is constant effort and rejection and reeffort and i don’t even know what i’m trying to achieve. in any case, i didn’t find it and now i think i am doomed. doom doom doom is what i feel in my chest when i wake up, sighing, entertaining the thought of dropping school. but what for for what? there is no back up plan. i am here because i have no better place to be.

good gourd why divulge so much information? context? i am producing because i have to, like pulling teeth and blood from a stone. i have been emptied. there is nothing left to project[ile vomit] but we go on. like a zombie empire of art without meaning or need or desire.

we went to joliette and the only engaging work of art there was in the children’s studio.

as a testament to my inability to follow directions and desire to be an artist, i am performing and documenting the burial of the shrine of former ghosts.

in this piece entitled REST, i, heather utah, am returning to the median between st urbain and clark streets to bury the shrine. i have chosen this location as the final resting place and resolution of this piece as i have gathered most of my materials and inspiration from this spot.

having worked in the public realm multiple times beforehand, i have learned that public space and private property are one and the same. and i have learned that behaviour in these spaces dictates the public’s reaction to the presence of the artist. most space must be appropriated and claimed for the doer and maker.

no one is going to give you space. do no expect space to appear. go and find what you feel is real. do not hesitate to break laws. legal and illegal have little to do with right and wrong.

my having done anything else with this piece would result in frustration and my having performed an act that does not coincide with the teleology of my artistic process. i do not want to make art for school. i make art to resolve art and emotive needs.

i would have preferred to perform the burial on the traditional day of the dead but circumstances beyond my control occurred and postponed it until november 5th, 2009.
i am in many ways poisoning the earth with this performance but i have retrieved most pieces that are toxic and replaced them with the pods and seeds that were residual to my spinning the milkweed silk to make the shrine cage.

maybe what i am doing is wrong. i don’t know. i take responsibility for my actions.